Drive-through scares are on tap at 'Terror in the Timbers' in Elgin
Deep in the woods of Elgin, or at least a couple of hundred yards off Big Timber Road, the haunted souls of the victims of one of America's first serial killers are said to wander. And now the spirit of their killer has come back to join them ... coincidentally, just in time for Halloween.
And with that, the stage is set for “Terror in the Timbers,” a drive-through haunted experience opening Friday at Camp Big Timber in Elgin.
Dan Barrie of BMC Productions said the idea for the event came out of finding a way to fill a void caused by the pandemic.
“My brother Andy was talking with someone from the Boy Scouts Three Fires Council, and they had decided they couldn't safely put on their annual haunted hike that they had held at the location for the past 29 years,” Dan Barrie said. “Our parents brought us up to be problem solvers, so thought we might be able to come up with something.” The brothers joined up with their brother-in-law Dan Miller and friend Robb Combs to create BMC Productions and then brought in the help of a consultant they met at a haunted house convention.
That was seven weeks ago. And now they're rarin' to scare.
Cars will proceed at about 3 mph along a torch-lit path through the grounds, making their way to 14 different scare scenes. Drivers will tune in to a radio simulcast for sound and are instructed to keep their windows closed for the full ride. Green and red light cues will indicate when to enter a scene and when to put the car in park so the scene will begin. Once inside the darkened vignette scenes, actors get involved and the scaring gets underway.
“People scare people,” Barrie said. “The paths are decorated and spooky but the fun part is inside the vignettes.”
“The actors cue the red and green lights, so they control the movement and ensure they're safe,” Barrie said. “Actors will do their scaring from the sides and behind so they're never in front of a car.” There will be two actors per scare scene, and all the scaring will take place when cars are in park inside the vignette.
Each scene will last about 15-20 seconds. The whole experience takes about 20 minutes.
Tickets are purchased online at terrorinthetimbers.com. Tickets are $65 per car with a max of 4 people in order to stay compliant with state guidelines. Tickets come with a to-the-minute start time reservation. Shows run from 6 p.m. to midnight every Friday and Saturday, Oct. 2 to 31. They will also be open on the last two Thursdays of the month.
“Our driving force has been keeping people safe and still giving them the scare experience they're expecting,” Barrie said. “To show up for something like this, we didn't want to just have a bunch of skeletons hanging from trees, it's professional production values.”
“It's going to really scary,” Barrie said. “I hope I'm ready for it.”